Short Takes: News From All Over

September 15, 2005

Staff Utne.com

| September 2005

Wrapped Up In Books: A Guide to Rock Novels
By Michael Schaub, Bookslut
'It's easy to write about rock; it's nearly impossible to write well about rock.' So says Michael Schaub, who offers a genre guide with this comprehensive list of rock novels, including several penned by writers who rocked the page and the concert hall. -- Rose Millerhttp://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_09_006577.php

Picketers for Hire
By Stacy J. Willis, Las Vegas Weekly
The United Food and Commercial Workers union wants better working conditions inside Wal-Mart grocery stores in the Las Vegas area. So it's stocking picket lines with temps who earn six dollars an hour and no benefits while enduring the scorching desert heat. Could a picketers' union be on the horizon? -- Archie Ingersollhttp://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2005/09/08/awsi1.html

Hitchin' a Ride
By Elaine Wolff, San Antonio Current
Searching for the Southern Big Foot. Live cobra hearts. Stranded in the South Pacific -- on purpose. A new breed of travel shows is shaking things up on a global scale, creating a different kind of cultural exchange. From young twenty-somethings trotting the globe ? la The Real World to a British guy who drops himself (minus supplies) in remote locales, journalists are literally going out of their way to remind us that the world is, indeed, a strange place. -- Sarah Washhttp://www.sacurrent.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15169377

Getting Clean
By Emma Snyder, Killing the Buddha
There was no running water for Emma Snyder when she visited a Buddhist monastery in China. For most people that would be an inconvenience; for her, it was much more. As an obsessive compulsive hand washer in a waterless situation, she was forced to contemplate what it really means to wash her hands, and why she is driven by compulsion to do so up to 45 times a day. (Thanks, The Revealer) -- Rose Millerhttp://killingthebuddha.com/confession/gettingclean.htm

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What Is True Happiness?
By James Shaheen, tricycle
Scholar B. Alan Wallace describes happiness as 'human flourishing,' a state brought about in the moment by practicing basic Buddhist virtues, carrying on a general state of well-being, committing to truth, and seeking out the nature of things. Lastly, it's being conscious of what he brings into the world on a daily basis. With these habits in place, Wallace considers himself pretty much a 'happy camper.' -- Ty Otishttp://www.tricycle.com/issues/editors_pick/877-1.html

Eight Ways to Change the World
By Panos Pictures, The Guardian
The girl in the picture is no longer a faceless child of poverty. And I have noticed that she has my sister's eyes. The photograph is one image from the set of photo essays 'Eight Ways to Change the World' detailing the eight Millennium Development Goals created by the UN in 2000 to eliminate severe poverty and hunger and provide education worldwide by 2015. -- Rose Millerhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/millenniumgoals/0,16440,1560528,00.html